FIREFLY EXCLUSIVE: Nashville’s Carverton dish on new EP, geographical influences and more

During our trip to Firefly Music Festival last month, we sat down with Nashville pop rock group Carverton. The quartet are gearing up for the release of their new self-titled EP out August 11. Check out the full interview and stream their new single, “Hollywood,” below.

KY: Hi, I’m Kyle Yorlets and I sing, rap and play guitar in Carverton.

How’s the festival going so far? This is your first experience at Firefly, right?

KY: It is, yeah.

How are you liking it? How have the performances gone so far?

KY: I think collectively we’ve probably sweat like what, 50 gallons? Just in the last two days?

Band: Yeah.

KY: Yeah, it’s been very hot, but it’s been absolutely wonderful. The people here are incredible and the other [bands] have been astounding. I can’t believe the energy of the whole place. It’s been really fucking cool and everyone’s treated us so well. I’m in love with this festival and everybody here. Anybody else?

CF: Just having a great time. This is my first festival experience, at all, so I’m just having a great time.

It’s living up to your expectations?

CF: Oh, for sure! It’s exceeding every expectation.

What’s your dream festival lineup? And what’s your dream festival to go to — and you can’t choose Firefly because we’re all here right now.

KY: Okay. So dream festival — let’s all pick one act and put it together as a festival. No, everybody pick two acts and put it together. So, I would do Aerosmith and Jon Bellion.

So you guys have been on a mini tour called the Road to Firefly tour — I was creeping on your Instagram earlier. How’s that been, the past couple of shows for you guys?

KY: It’s been fantastic. We’ve loved every bit of it. We’ve had a couple sold out dates and some really fun stuff. Great traveling the country. It’s such a beautiful land all throughout, you know? And every part of the country has a different view and a different attitude. It’s just cool to see the different kinds of people and how they all interact with each other and everybody has been so cool with us. We got to see a lot of friends we haven’t seen in a long time along the way and our tourmates, Dear Tatiana and LB Easy, were incredible. I’ve always wanted to tour with rappers, so that was a dream come true for me.

CF: Oh yeah, Dear Tatiana, for sure, they can just put it together, you know? They have that hip-hop [side] but still can rock out at the same time kind of vibe. And LB Easy’s always just so good. So, so far this tour’s just been amazing.

KY: Yeah, it’s been a great way to end it, I’d certainly say.

So half of you grew up in Pennsylvania and then the other half of you came from Michigan, I believe, right?

CF: Michigan, yeah. And I was born like 30 minutes outside of Nashville.

You guys kind of all kind of found each other in Nashville. How do each of your different backgrounds from your different hometowns and areas kind of morph into your band? How does that effect you guys if at all?

KY: Hmm, I think that it definitely helps. It makes for a really interesting dynamic and some good conversations on the bus. Like sometimes we’ll say something and we’ll be like “What is that?” You know? Michael and I, we both grew up in PA, but we came from very different environments. Like he was a suburb kind of guy and I grew up on a farm in a small town. So that’s always interesting seeing the kind of music that we listen to differed a lot as well.

MC: Yeah, the area in central PA where Kyle and I came from was really big into a punk and heavy metal kind of scene. That was kind of the norm there. So, the cultural difference moving out to Nashville was really something that wasn’t necessarily at the forefront of the scene there when you’re talking about just completely different genres. There was an energy and a spirit almost that we were used to that’s kind of based off a geographic location. So moving out to Nashville was very different seeing how there are people living in different worlds than us, but they’re still in the same planet of being a musician but having nothing to do with the music we’re playing. So, really it’s interesting kind of how our style can be based off just a geographic location.

KY: Absolutely. Uh, going back to the festival thing because we forgot to talk about what festival we would do besides Firefly. I would say probably Lolla. Lollapalooza for me.

CF: That’d be great. Yeah

MC: I like Mayhem Fest.

KY: Mayhem Fest.

SW: Um, probably Riot Fest. The punk rocker in me.

CF: Yeah I agree with Lolla. I would love that.

MC: We still need to play Warped Tour. A lot of bands by now have played Warped Tour. Like, our peers. But we haven’t gotten to that yet. Gotta get that one down.

SW: Next on the list.

MC: If you’re listening Kevin [Lyman]

KY: We love you Kevin.

MC: Hook us up!

[Laughs.]

You guys have an EP coming out soon. What was that recording process like? The writing, just the overall process? What would you say your musical influences were on there?

KY: You know, the writing process for it was really awesome. Michael and I started writing some of this music three years ago. I remember one of the very first things that I came up with when I started working on it was actually the chorus to “Hollywood.” Everything else we kind of worked toward it, and we ran into some road blocks, but then it all just started coming together as we got into starting to record our EP. We worked with some fantastic people on it. They really understood what we were going for. They did a great job with it and everything started flying and stuff started happening. I’m very excited that we’re going to be working with those people again, hopefully as our next record is getting ready to go. This EP coming out August 11th, I loved every bit of it.

SW: Yeah, shout out to Danon, our producer for this EP. He was killer, I loved working with him.

KY: And shout out to Trevor Hoffer for the amazing mixes as well.

MC: Also today’s the day our new single comes out!

KY: Yeah we actually just put out a new single today that’s off that EP, Callin It Quits. It’s everywhere right now, wherever you wanna go and grab it. Yeah, we’re very proud of everything that we’ve done here and we can’t wait to show the rest of the world what we got going on.

That’s pretty exciting. On a last note, what does the remainder of your weekend look like? What does the future, the summer, look like for Carverton with your new EP and singles you’re releasing?

KY: Okay! Well, we’re playing the Rambler Stage tomorrow over by the Treehouse stage for Firefly and then we’re closed out for this festival. Then we’re going back to Nashville on Monday and playing a show with Never Let This Go. After that, we’re just going to be working on getting some of our other music out there and our EP coming out August 11th.

SW: We got a music video too.

KY: We have a music video coming out July 28th for “Hollywood,” directed by Josh Lockhart, and it’s looking fantastic. And then just pushing the EP. Doing some radio tours and hopefully getting back on the road by the fall.

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